Julian “J-Rock” Williams: Loss Forgiveness!
Come Saturday, January 18, WBA, IBF and IBO super welterweight champion Julian “J-Rock” Williams (27-1-1, 16 KO’s) will make the first defense of his titles. In a hometown affair, he will face Jeison “Banana” Rosario (19-1-1, 13 KO’s) at Liacouras Center located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Outside of his debut, the unified champion has only fought in Philly one other time. The bout with Rosario will only be his third time fighting in his home town and his fifth time in his home state since turning pro!
JUST SAY NO!
As long as Williams has had a platform on television, he has maintained two consistent messages. His lead talking point typically revolves around advocacy of a clean sport. Near instantaneously after winning the titles from Jarrett “Swift” Hurd (23-1, 16 KO’s), Williams made it painfully clear that to fight him you had to register for VADA.
In this modern era of the sport, PED’s use has proven to be highly prevalent in boxing. Consequently, J-Rock has opted to draw his line in the sand and face the issue head on.
CHANGING PERCEPTION
The second issue that the tactical Philly fighter has chosen to champion is “loss forgiveness.” Williams took the time to indulge the topic in a recent interview conducted on the AK and Barak Show. Along with PED’s, another predominant element in this modern boxing climate is the near deification of an undefeated record. The problem with this practice is two-fold.
First, many times boxers and their promoters will steer away from potentially challenging or necessary developmental fights simply to protect the ‘0’. Secondly, all too often, when a fighter losses the fans treat them like the town leper and boo them out of town. It’s a common thought process for many to believe a boxer’s career is over because they lost.
Obviously, there is some personal bias involved in this topic for Williams. He has a knockout loss to WBC world middleweight champion Jermall “Hit Man” Charlo (30-0, 22 KO’s) on his own ledger. Although, J-Rock would counter that he is his own best example.
After losing to the Hit Man, Williams successfully illustrated his worth by rebounding and becoming a unified world champion.
This is why J-Rock feels that the fans should relax a bit when it comes to writing fighters off so capriciously. That doesn’t mean that fighters should run up an open tab on losses! Everything, even losses, should only be tolerated in moderation and when coming with good cause.
“You can’t just write a dude off after a loss. A lot of times people get better after losses. You never know the circumstances that goes into the loss. It’s just a lot. So, I don’t want boxing to be like MMA where you got a dude that’s fighting for the title at 20-10, you know what I’m saying?
“But I do think a loss coming up ain’t always the worst thing in the world.”
By: Bakari Simpson
